School of Modern Languages and Cultures
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Richard Hibbitt
Senior Lecturer in French
0113 343 3495
Biography
My first degree was in French and German at Royal Holloway, University of London, which included a year working as an assistant in Strasbourg. After this I spent a year as a DAAD-funded visiting student at the University of Augsburg, followed by a MA in Comparative Literature at the University of East Anglia. I then took a PGCE at the University of Exeter and spent a year teaching French and German at various schools in London and Surrey. After this I returned to UEA to study for a PhD in Comparative Literature, during and after which I taught French there part-time. Before joining the Department at Leeds in 2007 I held two one-year Lectureships in French, at the National University of Ireland, Galway and at the University of York.
Teaching
I currently teach on the following modules: Critical Questions: Approaches to Reading and Interpretation (Level 1) and Resistance and Desire: Introduction to French Studies (Level 1); The Pleasures of French Poetry (Level 2) and The Short Form in French and Francophone Literature (Level 2); Symbolism and Decadence: French Literature in the Fin de Siècle (Level 3).
Research
My research interests encompass two overlapping areas. The first is in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French literature, with a particular emphasis on the work of Paul Bourget and on the fin-de-siècle preoccupation with the concepts of dilettantism and cosmopolitanism. I am also interested in the reception of fin-de-siècle literature and in cultural exchanges during this period. This research has led to recent and forthcoming publications on Bourget, Laforgue, Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde. I am currently working on a book project on cosmopolitanism and Decadence, which will explore the aesthetic, cultural and political ramifications of fin-de-siècle cosmopolitanism with reference to writers including Bourget, Henry James and Thomas Mann.
My second area of research is informed by an interest in English, French and German literature from a comparative perspective, stretching from Montaigne to W. G. Sebald. This includes my first book, Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the Fin de Siècle (Legenda, 2006), and an ongoing interest in dilettantism, digression, experimentation and error. I have recently published with Dr Jo Catling (UEA) a co-edited volume of essays on W. G. Sebald, entitled Saturn's Moons: W. G. Sebald - A Handbook (Legenda, 2011).
I am on the Executive Committee of the British Comparative Literature Association:
and the Assistant Editor of its journal Comparative Critical Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press:
I would be interested in supervising research on the following areas: French fin-de-siècle literature and thought, especially the works of Bourget and his contemporaries (e.g. Henry Bérenger, Jules Lemaître, Édouard Rod); cosmopolitanism, cultural exchange, reception and translation during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century; different conceptions of dilettantism; comparative topics, particularly with a focus on literature in French and German.
Publications
Monograph
Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the Fin de Siècle (Oxford: Legenda, 2006)
Edited book
Saturn's Moons: W. G. Sebald - A Handbook, ed. by Jo Catling and Richard Hibbitt ( Oxford: Legenda, 2011)
http://www.mhra.org.uk/cgi-bin/legenda/legenda.pl?catalogue=b9781906540029
Articles, book chapters and other publications
'Reflections on the Fruitful Error', in Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression, ed. by Rhian Atkin ( Oxford : Legenda, 2011), pp. 27-36
'The Artist as Aesthete: The French Creation of Oscar Wilde', in The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, ed. by Stefano Evangelista ( London : Continuum, 2010), pp. 65-79
'Paul Bourget's critique of fin-de-siècle cosmopolitanism', in The Cause of Cosmopolitanism: Dispositions, Models, Transformations, ed. by Laura Rascaroli and Patrick O'Donovan ( Oxford : Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 173-87
'Le roman d'analyse et le romanesque: la représentation de l'héritage psychologique chez Paul Bourget', in Romanesque et Histoire, ed. by Christophe Reffait (Collection Romanesques, vol. III ; Paris: Encrage, 2008), pp. 175-89
'Oscar Wilde et Paul Bourget : Deux vies en parallèle', rue des beaux-arts, 17 (Nov. / Dec. 2008), ed. Danielle Guérin (online) http://www.oscholars.com/RBA/seventeen/17.13/rencontres.htm
'Dilettantism and Irony: Jules Laforgue and C. M. Wieland', Forum For Modern Language Studies, 44.3 (July 2007), 290-300
'"This savage parade": Recent translations of Rimbaud', The Cambridge Quarterly, 36.1 (February 2007), 71-82 (review article)